


Original Fiction

by Patcho418



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Erik needs a hug, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Original Universe, Other, PTSD, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2019-10-14 06:28:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17503397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Patcho418/pseuds/Patcho418
Summary: Erik Thompson is finally back with his friends, with his team. But he still has his own demons to fight, his own traumas to deal with, and unfortunately past events have convinced him it's his burden to bear.





	1. Nightmares

Erik awoke with a low growl, his body tensing up against the soft mattress. The weight of the thick blanket was thrown off of him immediately as he sprung up, the cold air of the room slamming into his damp skin and sending a shiver down his spine. His breaths remained patchy as he tried and tried to calm the burning sensation in his lungs, finally managing after several long inhalations to quiet himself.

The redhead sat upright, still and alert for a moment as he examined the room around him. Though it was dark around him, he could still hear the air still around him, silence surrounding him as if he were waiting for it to lash out at him for disturbing it with his panic attack.

Nothing.

With a sigh of finality, Erik began to settle himself back into the warm bed when he heard shuffling across the room from him. Panicking, he quickly dropped under the covers and pulled them snugly over himself, hoping that Camila hadn’t been stirred from her own rest. He knew she often had troubles with nightmares as well, and though she’d been getting better since their failed mission two years prior, he knew more than anybody that those nightmares were never really gone.

There was a soft mechanical whirring from her bed, and Erik sighed in defeat; she was putting her legs on, likely to investigate the disturbance. He held his breath, hoping to appear asleep to his younger companion so that she wouldn’t have to disturb herself with his problems. There was too much to focus on in the coming days, and losing sleep over something as inconsequential as a little bad dream wasn’t worth anyone’s time.

As he’d expected, returning here was burdening his old friends with his problems. His failures. They’d all grown so much and become so strong in the years since their defeat, and what had he done? Wasted away in a ghetto, losing fight after fight and sleep after sleep and friend after friend—

The muscular woman stood over him, her mechanical limbs softly humming. Erik peaked out from the corner of his eye and made out her silhouette, noticing that she hadn’t connected her right arm.

“I can see you’re awake,” she whispered uncharacteristically calmly. She waited for a response that never came from the man still hoping that his silence would send her back to bed; he was absolutely wrong. “Erik, are you okay?”

He exhaled coldly and pulled the covers from his face, though he remained close to his pillow and wrapped tightly in comforting grey blankets. “I’m fine.”

“Bull,” she remarked gently, despite the insinuation of the word. She leaned her left arm against the wall beside him and relaxed her body, her breathing equally patchy. “If you were okay you wouldn’t be sweating like a pig, _burro_.”

“Way to comfort me,” he retorted, doing his best to avoid continuing the discussion.

Camila was not going to back down from Erik’s stubborn challenge. “Did you have a bad dream?”

Seeing as he was sure he wasn’t going to win this one, he finally elected to humour her. “Yeah, but it’s no big deal. I have them all the time.”

Camila frowned as she leaned closer. “Then it is a big deal. You keep on having them and you’re not gonna get rid of them!”

“Then there’s no point in talking about them,” he shot back tiredly.

She seemed taken aback slightly by his remark, and for a moment he was both relieved and apprehensive that this could have been the end of the conversation. Why was he worried? Didn’t he just want to go back to sleep? His nightmares were no concern of others, especially when they had more important things to do than coddle him.

Still, Camila didn’t head back to bed. Instead, she slowly leveled herself to the end of his bed, sitting comfortably—if not a little hesitantly—on the end by his curled-up legs. She bowed her head, fiery orange bangs hanging just above her scarred nose bridge. Erik couldn’t help but keep his eyes fixed on the nasty claw marks that separated her face in half, one clear and youthful, the other emphasizing the copious amount of scarring she’d received over her short career.

With her eyes fixed on her prosthetic legs, Camila sighed. “You know I have nightmares, _si_?”

Erik nodded; for the short time he knew her, she’d been fairly open about her own nightmares and past traumas, despite being very closed-off about everything else in her life. When they were part of Tracker team Alpha, she’d made sure to inform her team in case her nightmares ever got so bad that she needed someone—anyone!—to comfort her back to sleep.

The younger woman continued, her eyes unmoving. “I always had you and the others there to help me out, but it only ever did so much. It wouldn’t stop the next nightmare from happening, and it wouldn’t make them any less horrifying. It didn’t stop me from hearing unending screams, or from walking through thick clouds of smoke. It didn’t help with how my lungs would burn after every one of those damn nightmares, and it certainly didn’t help me sleep any better the next night.” By now, she was visibly balling her left fist into her leg, while it seemed as though what remained of her right arm was even tensing up. “But one night, Tinker asked me to share what I saw. And I did. It didn’t help at first, and I was so furious at him for it, but after time I found that so long as I could tell people what was actually haunting me, it would haunt me less and less each time. I didn’t have to go it alone, not when people I trusted finally understood why it always burned to wake up.”

The redhead loosened his grip on his sheets and uncurled his legs, resting them against Camila’s, and he noticed that the two of them were trembling fairly obviously. He immediately recoiled, ultimately self-conscious of her discovering how vulnerable and afraid he actually felt despite the stubbornly thick wall he’d put up.

Then, Camila reached out and clasped his leg; though it was clear she was trying to be gentle and comforting, her strength betrayed her and Erik pulled away again, immediately making her aware of how tightly she’d actually held onto him.

“Sorry,” she offered shamefully, “I guess I’m a little shaken too. I haven’t had to talk about this stuff for a while. It makes me tense.”

“Are you afraid?” Erik inquired, surprising himself with his sudden inquiry.

“Obviously,” she retorted with a snicker. “It’s like I said, you’re not gonna get rid of those nightmares. And no matter how much you talk about them, the fear still sticks with you. Even in passing, like now.” She paused, and finally after having averted her gaze for so long, she turned to him, her eyes red and swollen, yearning for comfort and…something else? A desperate look in her eyes, a vulnerable stare he’d never seen from her. “I still see her in my nightmares, and every time I just want to…wring her neck!” Her point was emphasized by her fist tensing up again, and then suddenly loosening as she shook her head shamefully. “Every fear I have, the fear of facing those vampires again, of losing different pieces of myself over the years, of losing battle after battle…it all comes back to her. I still don’t understand why I ever loved—why I ever trusted her.”

She brought her arm to her face and wiped away a tear from the corner of her scarred eye. Erik was surprised she was allowing herself to be as vulnerable as she was, but moreso wondered what she was trying to get out of him with this sob story.

He knew everything she was worried about, and what she was ashamed of. He knew how strong her feelings for her ex-partner was, and how weak she felt when she remembered ever trusting her so much. None of this was new. What did she want from him?

“And?”

There was a tense pause as the woman breathed softly, and he could still feel her trembling leg against the bed. He knew she was quick to anger, and yet she hadn’t lashed out like he’d expected. Instead, she nodded. “And I know what that feels like. More importantly, I know what an experience like that looks like.” After a quick, apprehensive pause, she added: “It was Divani, wasn’t it?”

Erik’s eyes squeezed shut as she spoke the name of the doctor, and his head dug itself further into his sweat-stained pillow. He’d avoided having to remember seeing her face in every single one of his nightmares, increasingly nightmarish as the months trudged on since that night. The night everything fell apart, and he realised just how stupid he’d been all along.

He growled in response, unable to find the right words to respond to Camila and hoping that it would be enough to confirm her suspicions.

Camila clearly wasn’t an idiot, and she looked away knowingly. “You know, I really did love Paula. But what you and Divani had, that was something else. Something far stronger. 

Saying that what she did to you—what she did to herself—sucks is nowhere close to how it must actually feel.”

This empathy from Camila, as unexpected as it was, prompted Erik to release even a tiny bit of tension from his shaking body, and he allowed his eyes to open as he looked over at her from under the comfort of his blankets.

“I never stop seeing her,” he began slowly, trying to find the right words to express just how unending these nightmares seemed. “And every time, it’s the same thing. Sometimes somewhere different, sometimes with different people, but the common thread is us.”

Upon saying that, his voice caught in his throat: there was no ‘us’ anymore to him, she’d made sure of that years ago, and the final nail in the coffin was how she betrayed his trust to the Cult and had all of his friends, her own old allies, hurt and traumatized. The moment she’d turned to S’argaarin, she had become an enemy, but the moment her darkest secrets came to light, there was no ‘us’ anymore.

So why had he used that word?

Finally seeming to find some semblance of confidence to continue, Erik lifted his head back up slightly, resting his weight on his propped-up elbow. “She’s…holding onto me, wherever we are. Tightly. And she’s not letting go. And I can see people around me being hurt, being…being killed in cold blood, but no matter how hard I try to pull away from her, she has me stuck there with her. I can’t get away, and I just…I just end up crying and screaming—” by this point he himself had begun to cry, though his voice remained still, “—and I can’t get away from her!”

Camila looked on silently as Erik slumped back into the bed, his emotions finally defeating him as the tears streamed violently down his reddened cheeks. He clutched at his  
pillow, clasping it as tightly as he could as he sobbed and heaved into his sheets. If he’d had any awareness in the moment of the environment around him, he would have felt Camila once more gently take hold of his leg, her trembling thumb stroking his calf.

Erik didn’t feel a thing, nothing except his own lungs burning and his own heart racing and his own teeth gritting against one-another.

And for once, he felt comfortable with his vulnerability.


	2. Rum

A cheery, rhythmic knocking drew Camila’s attention away from her static pinky finger and towards the barrack room door. 

“Come in,” she greeted.

The door swung wide as Maria leaned against its frame, a smug, showy grin stretching across her face. With her right hand, she drummed her fingers along the wooden doorframe, with her left she lightly swung a dark glass bottle beside her thigh; Camila scrunched her nose to hide the blush rising to her cheeks.

“I brought rum!” she sang, pushing herself out of the doorway and practically dancing over to Camila’s bed.

Camila smirked. “So you do deliver,” she jabbed.

Sitting down beside her, Maria winked and raised the bottle. “Who needs to go to a bar when you’ve got such fantastic room service?”

Then, she paused, the bottle dangling between her fingers in the air. Camila raised a brow, taken aback by the sudden silence from her usually talkative friend. Her hazel eyes searched the smaller woman beside her for an answer to her confusion, a reason behind the stillness. 

Of course Maria just happened to be wearing an expression much like her own: searching, lost in some sort of thought with no obvious answers. Camila’s eyebrow arched higher. “What?”

“Something’s up,” Maria mused, leaning close to Camila, her dark eyes encompassing fiery orbs in their shadow, still searching.

Camila swallowed back her nerves, both from her own insecurities that darted through her mind previously and from the empty space between them growing smaller and smaller. “What are you talking about?”

Closer. “You’re looking a little forlorn, and you hardly ever look that way.”

She grimaced, bracing herself. “Who says I’m forlorn?”

Closer again, smug confidence swimming in her eyes. “I do.”

Two words, yet they were enough to completely unwind the tension clinging to Camila’s muscles, pulling her backwards and stiffening her jaw. Two words that were enough to settle her mind and heart, two words that defeated all of her fortifications and placed her in the open. Vulnerable. A vulnerability she rarely felt, yet it was familiar nonetheless.

Camila sighed, allowing her body to slump forward. “It’s really nothing. Just some stupid shit.” She paused, looking at Maria, hoping that that would be enough to shift attention away from the subject but knowing all too well that that wouldn’t stop Maria from wanting to know. Once more, she braced herself, fists clenching and unclenching. “Okay, you gotta tell no one.”

Maria nodded, far too casually but nonetheless in kindness. “My lips are sealed.”

She shook her head. “And I mean it. Especially not Frain. He’d never shut up about it.”

“Oh, must be embarrassing then,” Maria gushed while leaning in, lips pursed tightly together. “Don’t worry, I’m all ears.”

A sigh escaped Camila’s lungs, soft but shaky, as she straightened her back. Her eyes darted back and forth agitatedly, as if seeking her next words in the air. Her foot tapped repeatedly against the hollow flooring, the loud metal amplifying the restless thumping. Uncertainty clawed at her mind, at her racing heart, and Camila wouldn’t have been surprised if she didn’t even speak a single word.

The words were there, and they were likely convincing enough to mask her true thoughts. The sentence formed in the back of her throat, then hovered in her mouth for a moment before making its way past her lips in a hushed, shielded confession. “It’s my pinky finger. I’m not used to having it again.”

Another silence settled between them, this one notably less tense. Camila watched the girl closely, awaiting a reaction seemingly trapped behind her tight lips and focused eyes. Couldn’t she say anything at all? 

The silence broke with an explosive laughter bursting from Maria’s mouth as she bent over, hollering into the bedsheets. Camila frowned; not quite the reaction she’d been hoping for, but frankly, what had she expected with a confession like that?

“Shut up,” she grumbled, shyly eyeing the rum that Maria had placed on the floor. “Geez, I’m just not used to this hand layout is all!”

Through sobbing laughter, Maria was able to look up at Camila, though her words cracked between smaller chuckles. “That’s the thing you’re most nervous about, Camila? I envy your resolve!”

Camila grunted, trying to subdue the redness of her true intentions. “Well, it’s not like you gave me a pinky finger with my last hand!”

“Sorry,” Maria sneered teasingly, “but connecting all those nerve endings you fucked up was a lot easier without it! C’mon, Cammie, it’s not like I was some sort of supergenius!”

“Obviously,” she retorted with a low voice clear of any malice.

Maria’s grin faded into a smug smirk as she looked Camila over once more, nodding to herself while Camila sat and wondered just what could be going through her head and whether or not she’d like it.

“Alright, lips unsealed,” she finally stated, standing quickly from the bed but not moving away. “I’m telling Frain,” she added with a wink and a giggle before attempting her escape.

Camila’s eyes widened and her teeth clenched, but by the time she was standing Maria had already moved away from her. Growling, she sprinted towards her, heavy metal feet thumping like drums against the floor; there was no way she was letting that information make it to Frain’s ears.

Maria had just made it into the hallway by the time Camila could catch up; she’d always been the faster of the two, and the recent upgrades to her legs certainly added to that. Before she even had the chance to process the quick turn of events, Maria found herself against the wall, back planted against cold plaster, Camila’s metal arm cutting off her escape route. 

Despite this, she still wore a confident smirk.

“Well,” she began, breathing against Camila’s elbow just inches from her face, “you definitely don’t want that info spreading.”

“You and him wouldn’t be able to shut up about it, so I’m thinking ‘no’,” Camila replied, trying her best not to shudder at the proximity of her arm to Maria’s lips; a slight adjustment of her hand was enough to calm her momentarily.

Well, until Maria leaned forward, her face now inches from Camila’s and her expression still confident and playful. Immediately, the heat spurred in her thumping chest, finding its way to her neck, her cheeks, her lips. 

Maria, clearly reveling in having some sort of upper hand on her, pulled back, still holding Camila’s gaze as she nonchalantly rested her head against the wall. “Do you actually think you can shut me up?”

Oh yes, she could. 

Perhaps it was the challenge uttered to her, hovering in the space between them until she accepted it. Perhaps it was the dizzying heat overtaking her head, her thoughts, blurring lines she would otherwise be too scared or too proud to cross. Perhaps, even, it was the allure of those shadowy eyes gleaming fiery orange back at her, a growing spark that she knew was always there but had been burning brighter all evening, starting from the moment she stood in that doorway and finally bursting into radiant fire.

It didn’t matter the reason, what mattered was that Maria was quiet, eyes wide, and Camila was kissing her. She was kissing Maria, this girl who’d teased her for years and led her on this wild chase the moment she realised that she felt more for her, that she was allowed to feel more for her.

It certainly wasn’t the most perfect kiss; lips were hard to place, and she wasn’t sure if she was being too forceful or too soft, or maybe neither? Maybe she had gotten the wrong message from all the teasing, acted too quickly and too recklessly. They’d just reconciled after she spent far too many years angry about her own stupid reservations, why was she risking that for a stupid kiss?

She pulled away, her hand quickly dropping to her side, and tried her best not to scream in frustration. Of course, the look on Maria’s face made that ‘not screaming’ thing much easier to handle. There was no malice in her expression, no shock or apprehension or confusion. There was only an earnest smile and a half-lidded stare.

“Geez, um…” Camila exhaled, stepping carefully backwards, coming down from her panicked state to remember the rum Maria had brought and how she could really use some of it right now. “Sorry, you know, about that!”

“I’m not,” Maria offered, stepping up where Camila had been previously standing, filling the space. “You really don’t know how long I’ve wanted you to do that, do you?”

“I’m guessing until about five seconds ago?” she jested, her nerves returning with this woman so unfairly close to her. 

Maria shook her head in response. “Long enough that I want you to shut up and do it again.”

The muscles in Camila’s shoulders loosened, allowing her to dip towards Maria’s lips without force, without her body pulling her away. When she kissed her again, it was just as out of practice and messy as it had been before; after all, she’d never done this before. Only in daydreams, moments where she found her mind leaning into the thought more and more, but never actually doing it. She angled her head, leaned into Maria, everything she could to make the kiss as perfect as she’d always wanted it to be.

And it was perfect, despite everything she was likely doing wrong. She felt fingers scratching under bristly hair at the back of her head, clinging to Camila for support as the woman leaned into her. Her hands instinctively found their way from her sides to Maria’s, hovering inches from her waist before making contact; even with her prosthetic, she could feel the intense heat surging from just beneath her top, prompting her to curl her fingers around her more tightly, an action that was met with a soft hum against her lips.

She felt everything she could feel in that moment. A longing for contact and affection that had gone disregarded for years finally coming to this single moment, this single overwhelming moment that burned her cheeks and filled her chest with a lightness she’d not known in her life. Lips brushed against each other between harsh breaths and desperate clinging to cloth and skin, her body seemingly guiding her where her mind could barely hold onto a single thought when so much was happening, in the space surrounding them but not daring to get between them, not daring to break them apart. Camila hadn’t known just how much she’d wanted this, but now she knew she didn’t want this to stop.

Her legs began taking small shuffling steps backwards towards the doorframe, her hands keeping Maria close to her, her mouth lingering against hers as she caught her breath. Breaking away made the hallway seem immediately cooler, emptier, the air around them no longer heated and buzzing with energy. Instead, it followed their tangled arms and lingering mouths into the open doorframe, it followed them into the room against the wood of the door, it followed them to the soft sheets on her bed, and it followed them through into the night.

When Camila awoke, it was to a delicate squeeze of her static pinky finger and a teasing smirk.


End file.
